Appreciation of Three Beauty in Xu Yuanchong's Spring Dawn
Firstly, the theory of "three beauties" is briefly introduced.
Mr. Xu Yuanchong is a master in the field of translation in China. He has made outstanding achievements and devoted himself to translating China's classical cultural works. More importantly, Mr Xu has made great achievements in translation theory. Based on his years of translation experience, Lao Xu established a set of theoretical systems of Chinese-English translation, such as "beautification tendency" and "re-creation theory".
The theory of "three beauties" was put forward by Mr. Xu Yuanchong on the basis of Lu Xun's Outline of the History of China Literature that "the beauty of meaning is the beauty of feeling the heart, the beauty of sound is the beauty of feeling the ears, and the beauty of form is the beauty of feeling the eyes". Among them, "the beauty of meaning" means that the translation should reproduce the artistic beauty of the original, such as symbolic meaning, pun meaning, deep meaning, implication and so on. "Sound beauty" mainly refers to the level tone, rhythm, disyllabic, overlapping rhyme, rhyme and so on. In dealing with phonology, xu teacher believes that English is not flat and can be translated into the alternation of light and heavy sounds; Disyllabic feet exist in both Chinese and English and can be translated into each other in the same form; On the other hand, overlapping can be translated flexibly, but the sound beauty of the original poem should be reproduced as much as possible. "Formal beauty" includes concise and neat language and neat sentences.
Second, translation comparison and analysis
Original poem: Xiao Chun
meng haoran
Sleeping sickness in spring unconsciously broke the morning, and the chirping of birds disturbed my sleep.
How many flowers fall after a stormy night.
Xu Yuanchong translated:
This spring morning, I lay in bed. I'm lying,
I didn't wake up until I heard birds chirping.
After a night of wind and rain,
How many fallen flowers there are!
John? Turner translation:
How suddenly the spring morning comes!
You can hear sweet birds singing everywhere.
In the storm last night? Ah, who knows,
How many flowers fall when it rains and winds?
Weng Xianliang's translation:
Late! When I woke up this morning, I knew.
Birds around me are crying, crying.
I felt the fury of the storm last night.
I don't know how many poor flowers have withered.
Appreciate:
Yimei 1
The poem "Spring Dawn" is flowing, simple and natural, but profound. However, there are differences in understanding this poem. Some people think that "Spring Dawn" is the poet's love and pity for spring. However, combined with Meng Haoran's life experience, some people think that this is a poem of spring resentment, and the poet laments that the years have passed and his fame has not been established.
Different understanding of the emotional intention of poetry will lead to different emotions in translation. Weng's translation is the strongest expression of exclamation among the three versions. Weng's translation is "late!" This word laid the emotional tone of the full text. The three translators also deal with the "crow" in couplets in different ways. The original meaning of "crying" is "crying". Some ancient poems express their original meaning as well as "weeping", adding a touch of sadness, such as "Cold Night" and "Luoman Rules". Therefore, both Weng's translation and Xu's translation here choose "crying" while Turner chooses "singing".
2. Beautiful voice
Tang poetry pays great attention to rhyme and meter, which makes it catchy to read. All three translators pay attention to rhyme, and both Xu's version and Turner's version adopt aabb rhyme. "Lie" and "cry" and "shower" and "flower" translated by Xu are all disyllabic words with the first stress. Turner's Spring vs Singing and Telling vs Autumn.
Let's look at the rhythm of this poem again: spring sleep/no/waking up, everywhere/smelling/singing birds. Night/wind/rain, flowers fall/know/how much. The rhythm of this poem is 2 12, with cadence and beautiful music. The sense of rhythm in English is generally reflected by light and heavy pronunciation. Among the three versions, Xu pays the most attention to rhythm, taking the first sentence as an example, "I am in bed at dawn? The translation of M Wo is basically a mode of "cadence, cadence and cadence", and the light and heavy sounds are interlaced, giving people a sense of cadence.
3. Beautiful form
China's ancient poems pay attention to neat antithesis and varied rhythms. Moreover, the characteristics of Chinese characters make the width of Chinese characters consistent and look more neat. But English words are different. Each English word is different in length. Even if you use the same number of words, it is difficult to reach the same length. When Mr. Xu Yuanchong translated Tang poetry and Song poetry, he generally translated seven-character poems into Alexandria with twelve syllables per line, and five-character poems into eight or ten syllables per line.
Comparing the three versions, it is not difficult to find that among the three translators, Xu's version is the most exquisite in form, with eight syllables per line, neat and orderly.